1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a dough-piece arraying apparatus for a machine that automatically forms croissants or the like.
2. Prior Art
In forming croissants a dough sheet is cut into dough pieces having polygonal shapes. The dough pieces are then rolled up from one of their sides. When this is done continuously in a rolling-up means of a croissant molder etc., the dough pieces are arrayed with their longest sides at right angles to the direction of transfer before being fed to the rolling-up means.
Japanese Patent No. 1,343,038, assigned to the applicant, discloses an arraying apparatus for croissant dough pieces. As shown in FIG. 5A, a dough sheet 1 is cut into triangular pieces with their bases being in the feeding direction. They are then conveyed from an upstream conveyor 30 to a downstream conveyor 40 that is running at a speed faster than the upstream conveyor 30. After the dough pieces are transferred from the upstream conveyor 30 to the downstream conveyor 40, they are transversely spaced apart from one another by piece holders 10, which are to move the dough pieces in the transverse direction (see Section B of FIG. 5), and at the same time they are turned 90 degrees (see Sections C and D of FIG. 5) so that the base of each piece forms the leading end, aligned at right angles with the feeding direction.
In this apparatus the distance between the adjacent dough pieces increases in the transverse direction to avoid any interference between the corners of the adjacent pieces when they are turning. As a result, although the width of the upstream conveyor 30 is W1, the width of the downstream conveyor 40 must be widened to W2. Thus, to keep the space for the spacing and turning of the dough pieces, the downstream conveyor will have to be substantially broader than the upstream conveyor. This creates a disadvantage in that the apparatus becomes large.